CPAP machines - I suffer from severe sleep apnea, the condition destroys everything from the brain to liver and heart. Needless to say, my life has improved 110% ever since I started using CPAP therapy.

I mean, just because the internet relies on computers doesn't mean it's not more significant imo. A PC on its own was cool and definitely transformative, but not like the internet has been on the last 25 years or so.

I mean, just because the internet relies on computers doesn't mean it's not more significant imo. A PC on its own was cool and definitely transformative, but not like the internet has been on the last 25 years or so.

It's the combination of the two that has been transformative. If you had the internet, but limited to large institutions on expensive shared machines, it wouldn't have been particularly cool or transformative of everyday live. Cheap, widely accessible computing resources have transformed our lives more, I'd argue; widely available computing resources with pre-internet comms technologies would still have a major impact on our lives.

The development of the smart phone. It is basically a miniature computer in your pocket, making the Pokedex look like some amateur hour technology. Like, as much as the Internet itself, being able to access it at basically all times, while also having such conveniences as a digital wallet, torch, a camera, a timer, games, and just... Well, whatever you can find an app for really, is mind blowing. Even a lot of sci-fi still struggles to integrate them properly because of just how sweeping they are now, never mind where they might be in a hundred years.

Do glasses count? I have a -5.25 prescription in each eye and could not function without my glasses. When I was a poor kid there were times I had to go without glasses because they broke or they got lost. Once a neighborhood bully stole them and threw them in a lake. I don't even go to the bathroom without them.

So many candidates, because I was born in the 1950s. Cellular radio, the technological innovation that drives our mobile phone networks, is one. The successful reduction or elimination of several formerly common fatal illnesses is another. Packet-switched networking, which forms the technological basis of Ethernet and the Internet, undoubtedly make the world much more connected then it used to be. Geostationary communications satellites, weather monitoring and prediction, improvements in agricultural efficiency, and many other changes I could name directly benefit billions of people alive today.

There are many remaining problems, and some of those have emerged at least partly because of our advances in technology. We're in the middle of a mass extinction, caused by our success in dominating every niche and every part of the planet, that could soon begin to threaten our own viability through the loss of biodiversity and the habitats that contribute to the global ecology. We show none of the necessary awareness or political will required to fix the emerging problems. The eventual cost will have to be paid, but it's likely to be much higher the later we delay the reckoning.

The internet has to be the single most-important breakthrough in decades. In just fifteen-ish years, it has grown from a "series of tubes" to something people carry about in their pockets. Cell phones are a close second to the internet, but mostly because they simply provide access to the internet itself.

Just remember how different life was before the internet. It's like living with no automobiles in the world to suddenly having highways in every neighborhood.

The fact that a phone can stream music to a car and video/music to televisions. Sure, we could do things like this through other wired devices in the past, but this is so damn fast and so much easier to set up.

Broadband Internet, if you have ever experienced life before the Internet and then onto Dial Up you’d understand why. But Wi-Fi too was a must

Ipad (tablets in general) - instead of Newspapers/Magazines I get my daily news from these available 24/7 up to the minute breaking news, all info I never thought I wanted to know via Wikipedia etc and everything else i can do all in my hands, including video n music etc with a screen size clise to a small magazine or comic

Banned

The internet, which was being established as I grew up, essential for me not being a completely antisocial hermit and leading me to having relationships that would probably not have happened were I born even 10 years earlier (born in 84). For all the negatives it brings the net has allowed super shy and reserved people like myself to come out of my shell.